Lullaby
by Genevieve Darcy Granger
Summary: It's heavy to bear the legacy of your father. Seeking advice, Judith goes to someone who won't sugarcoat the truth.


_You arrive along with the sun,_

 _Where have you been, darlin'? What have you done?_

 _You were out finding trouble again,_

 _There's a fire in your eyes and there's blood on your hands._

* * *

 _Come inside and lie down to sleep,_

 _You ain't gonna run and you know that you're beat._

 _Rest awhile, they're coming for you,_

 _There's a price to be paid for the things that we do._

* * *

Lying on his back on his small cot, Negan tossed the tennis ball in the air over his head and caught it over and over again. Sometimes he would toss it as high as he could so that it would bounce off the ceiling, and occasionally he would switch hands and bounce the ball off the wall or the floor instead, but for now he settled into the repetitive motion of tossing and catching the ball, a one-handed one-ball-act kind of juggle. He was waiting for someone.

The rickety door hinges squealed under the heavy weight of the door as Judith pushed it open. "Hey, Negan," she said, her greeting much more muted than usual.

Sitting up with his bare feet on the floor, Negan murmured, "Hey there, angel. How was your day?"

Shrugging, Judith dodged his eyes as she slid his lunch tray under the bars. "It was okay."

"Just okay?" Negan leaned forward and caught the edge of his tray with his pinkie, sliding it across the floor until it was by his feet. As usual, he had a sandwich and he was allowed one fresh fruit or vegetable. This time it was a peach. Picking up his tray, he set it in his lap before he looked up at where Judith was sitting in the metal chair reserved for his 'guests' and warden, usually. "What happened, Judith? Is something wrong?"

Again, she shrugged, and though she had to be eleven – maybe twelve-years-old, her feet still didn't quite touch the ground, swinging in the air. She was short for her age. With her head tipped forward like it was, the brim of her hat shielded her face from view, and Negan was transported back in time when he had a similar sullen Grimes sitting across from him. Only that time, Negan wasn't the prisoner, and he knew exactly why Carl was giving him the stink-eye.

"It's okay, Judith. You can tell me." Negan hesitated, not wanting to push her. When Judith didn't respond, he let it go. "Okay. Well, do you have any homework you want me to help you with?" He picked up his sandwich and took a bite. It had the crusts cut off, so he could tell that Judith was the one to make his lunch today. The thought made Negan smile.

Seemingly grateful for the distraction, Judith reached down into her bag and grabbed her math book, flipping it open to a clean page. "Do you know how to multiply fractions?"

"Yeah, that's easy. Multiply the tops and multiply the bottoms. Here lemme see your book…"

They worked quietly after that, Negan explaining the concept to her and then checking over Judith's math afterwards to see if she got it right. He could tell that whatever was on her mind was still bothering her because she started making careless mistakes.

Reaching through the bars, Negan tapped the page with his clean hand, his other hand sticky with peach juice. "You gotta double check your work, Jude. 3/6s can be simplified into a half."

With a sigh, Judith flipped her pencil around and vigorously started erasing her work. Her eraser rubbed too fast and it ended up tearing a small hole in the paper. Judith's face crumpled up like she was going to cry, and Negan quickly stepped in.

"Hey, let's…let's take a break." Negan reached backwards on his bed to grab the tennis ball. "Wanna play for a little while?"

"Yeah, sure." Judith tossed her math book to the floor and moved to sit on the ground. Negan mirrored her position, and then they sat there rolling the ball back and forth to each other. He was still eating his peach, careful not to catch his teeth in the poisonous pit.

If they were in a more vigorous mood, they might've tried throwing it through the bars. Sometimes the tennis ball would just slice right through, or it would bounce off the bars and they'd quickly have to rebound it. It was a fun game that they had developed over the years as Judith got older, and it was a safe way for her to practice her hand-eye coordination. Rolling the ball was a game that they haven't played in a while, since she was very little. Usually nowadays when they played it, it was because she brought her little brother RJ to play, too.

After a while of this, Negan slowly started up the conversation again, his picked over peach pit set aside on the tray. "Y'know, Jude, I can't thank you enough for coming down here to see me. I know I help you with your math homework and all, but you could've gone to anybody for that. I'm glad you picked me."

"You're funny, Negan," Judith mumbled by way of explanation. She missed the ball and had to stretch out on her side to get it from where it bounced off her math book. "And you always have time for me."

Cocking his head, Negan pushed a little further. "Does nobody else help you with your homework, angel?"

"Teacher does." Judith's tone is casual even if her words are cryptic. "Eugene helps with my math work, too, when he has the time."

"Well, shit. Eugene's probably better than me at math, a smarty-pants like that. I may have been a teacher, but I was just a gym teacher." More to himself, Negan added, "And sometimes subbed for the history teacher when she was on maternity leave."

"Gym teacher?" For the first time since she came down here today, Judith seemed more like her usual happy-go-lucky self. "You mean like a coach?"

"You know what a coach is?" Negan tilted his head. Judith was born in this new world; sometimes she didn't know what he was referring to.

"Of course, I know what a coach is." Judith rolled her eyes at him, and in that moment, she looked so much like Rick that Negan's heart clenched. "I read, y'know."

With a soft laugh, Negan looked sidelong at the small stack of books in the corner. "Yeah, I know." Most of them were for elementary school kids, and a lot of them were by Andrew Clemens. He seemed to be Judith's favorite author. While the books definitely not for Negan's age range, he didn't complain about it. His choices were already limited, and he enjoyed being able to talk about the books to Judith. Negan suspected that again, she had no one to talk to about them since she was the only kid in her age range. All the other kids were a lot younger.

"What did you coach?" Judith asked, bringing Negan's attention back to the game as the tennis ball rolled against his knee.

"Oh, a little bit of everything. Girls' volleyball, basketball at the YMCA, football, little league…" Negan trailed off and awkwardly cleared his throat. "My favorite sport was ping-pong, but that was just played for fun in gym class. We didn't have any school teams or state competitions for it."

"What's ping-pong?" Judith wrinkled her nose.

Again, Negan chuckled at her. "Maybe you should go find a book about it, Jude," he teased her. "A movie would probably have a better explanation, though. Like _Forrest Gump_ or _Ball of Fury_. Eh…" He looked back up at her as he remembered the latter movie. "Probably just _Forrest Gump_."

"I'll ask Momma about it when we have our next movie night." Judith rolled the ball a little too hard and it flew past Negan's leg and thumped against the wall before rolling back towards her.

Negan caught it before it could cross through the bars again. "You still have movie nights every week?"

"Every month now." Judith tucked her hair behind her ears. "We use most of the power for the air conditioner during the summer and the heater during the winter."

Humming thoughtfully, Negan let the conversation lapse off into silence again. He didn't have the luxuries of the AC or the heater. When he was cold, he was given extra blankets, and when he was hot, he just had to sweat it out. After so many years, though, he had acclimated.

Of course, Negan couldn't let the silence last for long. That was one thing he would never be acclimated with. "Y'know, Jude, after the world ended, I never thought I'd see another tennis ball again. Isn't that weird?"

"I guess so." A thoughtful look crosses Judith's face. "Momma gets the same way when she finds a candy bar."

"I don't blame her."

The fuzzy tennis ball continued to roll back and forth across the floor, picking up dirt as it went. Eventually, Judith got bored. "I'm ready to finish my homework now. I still have chores to do."

Collecting the ball, Negan tossed it back into his bed as he crawled back into it. His aching lower back was grateful to be off that hard, cold floor. "Okay, angel."

Judith moved back to the metal chair again and picked up her math book to pick up where she left off. She started doing better now, making less sloppy mistakes, but she still flipped her book around to show Negan and ask if what she was doing was right.

Now that she was in a better mood, Negan thought it was safe to ask. "So, what had you coming down here in such a bad mood, Jude?"

Steadily not looking at him, Judith concentrated on the math book in front of her though her eyes remained still. "People look at me different now. I just don't wanna be around them."

Negan froze, and then stood up and walked over to the bars. "What do you mean?"

With a dramatic sigh, Judith lifted her face and stared at Negan dead-on. "I hear people talking about me when I walk down the street next to Momma. It doesn't matter if I'm here or at the Kingdom with Aunt Carol, or if I go to the Hilltop. And it's not just stranger, it's people like Eugene and Uncle Aaron talking about me, too." Her lower lip wobbled dangerously. "They keep saying that I'm just like Daddy."

In moments like these – which weren't many because Judith was a tough little thing who rarely let things bother her – Negan wished he was out of the cell only so he could hold her. From his memory, he could only remember her outright crying three times. The first time was when she realized why he was put down here. It took a half-truth from Negan and the whole, ugly truth from Michonne for Judith to realize that he was why Uncle Glenn wasn't here anymore. She stayed away for about two weeks before she started creeping back around again. Judith didn't exactly forgive him for it, but she was young and the memories she had of her Uncle Glenn faded fast. After Aunt Maggie left, it was like she took all the memories of Uncle Glenn with her and Hershel. Negan apologized for who he was, and Judith accepted that he was just a bad man. But she didn't leave again; they were still friends.

The second time Judith had cried was when she revealed that she didn't think her daddy was going to come home again. Michonne, Negan knew, still held on to that hope with the blind devotion of true love and outright denial. She carried her grief with all the nobleness of Jesus' crown of thorns. But Judith was a little girl who never even grew up with stories about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. She grew up in a world where monsters were very much real, but mermaids weren't. And Judith grew up knowing that sometimes people got bit, or people just died in the stupidest of ways. Even people like her dad couldn't be immortal. Negan told her that it was okay to cry, and it wouldn't be the last time she'd cry for a dead person. Judith took it very well.

The last time Judith had cried to him had been about her baby brother RJ. She was very protective of him, but now Judith was getting to that age where she wanted to be independent and explore the world. They started letting her go outside the walls so that she could practice and learn hands-on. So as Judith started spending more time with the adults, she naturally started to hear more adult things.

There were suspicions about RJ's heritage. Talks that since Michonne was black, it was easy to erase any signs of RJ's true paternity. Judith wasn't stupid, and she was very observant. She got into a fight about it with a man named DJ, who Negan recognized as originally being from the Sanctuary. The next time Michonne dropped off Negan's food, he let it slip what he heard, and after that, there were no more whispers doubting Michonne's loyalty. Both Negan and Judith were grateful.

But this time as Judith cupped her palms over her eyes and wept, body curled over her math book, Negan didn't know what to say. "What's so wrong with being like your dad?"

Dripping snot and tears on her work, Judith snapped, "Daddy's dead!"

"Jude, you know how he died and what he died for. It's not a bad thing to –"

"I know!" Judith sniffled and scrubbed at her face with her sleeves under her skin went red. "But it's so…scary to think about."

Sticking his hand through the bars, he offered her his hand. "This world is scary, Jude. Eats you up."

"Momma thinks I should be more afraid to die." Judith stood up, letting her math book fall to the floor and slam shut. She walked two steps closer to the bars and let Negan take her by the shoulder and guide her closer, his hands pushing back her hair and wiping away the tears. "But I'm not afraid to die. I'm just afraid of what will happen after."

"You'll get to be with your Daddy, and Carl, and your other Momma. So many others." Gently, he curled his fingers under her chin. "Hell, I'm sure my Lucille would wanna meet you. You're already gonna have a friend in Heaven."

Judith's smile trembled. "That's not what I meant. I meant what will happen after I'm gone here. Momma…she'll be so sad. She'll start talking to me, too. And RJ is gonna have just another dead person, and then people will be whispering about him and how he's just like Daddy." A fat tear dripped down her cheek and clung precariously to her jaw before it dropped, a spot of moisture on the toe of her boots. "And what about you? Who's gonna talk to you?"

Negan started crying, too, before he could help it. "Jude, angel, I don't think anyone has answers for that until it happens. And that doesn't have to happen for a long, long time."

She shrugged. "Maybe. I dunno. Sometimes I think about it when I'm out there with them. If one of them – Laura, Eugene, Rosita, Aaron – if any of them were in danger, I'd die for them." Much braver than any child should ever have to be, Judith raised her chin. "I'll be ready for it, when the time comes."

In spite of himself, Negan scoffed and quickly wiped away the last of Judith's tears. Her breathes had that wavering quality that came after a good, hard cry. Later she'd scrubbing at her itchy eyes furiously, and Negan would be in the same damn boat. "Well, I guess it's true what they say then." He tapped the tip of her nose with his index finger. "You are just like your dad."

* * *

 _Fall asleep and forget all your troubles,_

 _Dream of laughter and old friends and lovers._

 _Dream of when you were innocent,_

 _Dream forever._

* * *

 _Lord knows you've been 'round in your day,_

 _But this kind of trouble, won't just go away._

 _Darlin', now you're adrift in the deep,_

 _So just lay down your head and I'll sing you to sleep._


End file.
